About the OADP Data Mover - OADP Application backup and restore | Backup and restore

Data Mover support
Enabling the built-in Data Mover
Built-in Data Mover controller and custom resource definitions (CRDs)
About incremental back up support

Use the OpenShift API for Data Protection (OADP) built-in Data Mover to move Container Storage Interface (CSI) volume snapshots to remote object storage and restore stateful applications after cluster failures. This provides disaster recovery capabilities for both containerized and virtual machine workloads.

The Data Mover uses Kopia as the uploader mechanism to read the snapshot data and write to the unified repository.

OADP supports CSI snapshots on the following:

Red Hat OpenShift Data Foundation
Any other cloud storage provider with the Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver that supports the Kubernetes Volume Snapshot API

Data Mover support

Review Data Mover support and compatibility across OADP versions to understand which backups can be restored. This helps you plan version upgrades and backup strategies.

The OADP built-in Data Mover, which was introduced in OADP 1.3 as a Technology Preview, is now fully supported for both containerized and virtual machine workloads.

Supported: The Data Mover backups taken with OADP 1.3 can be restored using OADP 1.3 and later.
Not supported: Backups taken with OADP 1.1 or OADP 1.2 using the Data Mover feature cannot be restored using OADP 1.3 and later.

OADP 1.1 and OADP 1.2 are no longer supported. The DataMover feature in OADP 1.1 or OADP 1.2 was a Technology Preview and was never supported. DataMover backups taken with OADP 1.1 or OADP 1.2 cannot be restored on later versions of OADP.

Enabling the built-in Data Mover

Enable the built-in Data Mover by configuring the CSI plugin and node agent in the DataProtectionApplication custom resource (CR). This provides volume-level backup and restore operations by using the Kopia uploader.

Procedure

Include the CSI plugin and enable the node agent in the DataProtectionApplication custom resource (CR) as shown in the following example:
```
apiVersion: oadp.openshift.io/v1alpha1
kind: DataProtectionApplication
metadata:
  name: dpa-sample
spec:
  configuration:
    nodeAgent:
      enable: true
      uploaderType: kopia
    velero:
      defaultPlugins:
      - openshift
      - aws
      - csi
      defaultSnapshotMoveData: true
      defaultVolumesToFSBackup:
      featureFlags:
      - EnableCSI
# ...
```
where:

enable

Specifies the flag to enable the node agent.

uploaderType

Specifies the type of uploader. The possible values are restic or kopia. The built-in Data Mover uses Kopia as the default uploader mechanism regardless of the value of the uploaderType field.

csi

Specifies the CSI plugin included in the list of default plugins.

defaultVolumesToFSBackup

Specifies the default behavior for volumes. In OADP 1.3.1 and later, set to true if you use Data Mover only for volumes that opt out of fs-backup. Set to false if you use Data Mover by default for volumes.

Built-in Data Mover controller and custom resource definitions (CRDs)

Review the custom resource definitions (CRDs) that the built-in Data Mover uses to manage volume snapshot backup and restore operations. This helps you understand how Data Mover handles data upload, download, and repository management.

The built-in Data Mover feature introduces three new API objects defined as CRDs for managing backup and restore:

DataDownload: Represents a data download of a volume snapshot. The CSI plugin creates one DataDownload object per volume to be restored. The DataDownload CR includes information about the target volume, the specified Data Mover, the progress of the current data download, the specified backup repository, and the result of the current data download after the process is complete.
DataUpload: Represents a data upload of a volume snapshot. The CSI plugin creates one DataUpload object per CSI snapshot. The DataUpload CR includes information about the specified snapshot, the specified Data Mover, the specified backup repository, the progress of the current data upload, and the result of the current data upload after the process is complete.
BackupRepository: Represents and manages the lifecycle of the backup repositories. OADP creates a backup repository per namespace when the first CSI snapshot backup or restore for a namespace is requested.

About incremental back up support

OADP supports incremental backups of block and Filesystem persistent volumes for both containerized, and OKD Virtualization workloads. The following table summarizes the support for File System Backup (FSB), Container Storage Interface (CSI), and CSI Data Mover:

Table 1. OADP backup support matrix for containerized workloads
Volume mode	FSB - Restic	FSB - Kopia	CSI	CSI Data Mover
Filesystem	S ^[1], I ^[2]	S ^[1], I ^[2]	S ^[1]	S ^[1], I ^[2]
Block	N ^[3]	N ^[3]	S ^[1]	S ^[1], I ^[2]

Table 2. OADP backup support matrix for OKD Virtualization workloads
Volume mode	FSB - Restic	FSB - Kopia	CSI	CSI Data Mover
Filesystem	N ^[3]	N ^[3]	S ^[1]	S ^[1], I ^[2]
Block	N ^[3]	N ^[3]	S ^[1]	S ^[1], I ^[2]

Backup supported
Incremental backup supported
Not supported

The CSI Data Mover backups use Kopia regardless of uploaderType.